Transcript: Episode 257: Pilot Pile-Up

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor with Susan Barry, episode 257. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/257.

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now, your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Natalie Kelly spent years as a stay-at-home mom before deciding in her 40s to become a pilot, eventually flying corporate jets and picking up a front-row education into what high-end service really looks like. After going through a divorce while her kids were in college, Natalie shifted her focus toward helping women, especially solo travelers and empty nesters, chase their travel bucket lists without draining their savings. With Fly Girl, Natalie has become one of the go-to voices for a fast-growing and often overlooked traveler segment, women in their 50s and beyond who finally have the time but want every trip to count. Today, we are going to talk about how to best approach bucket list travel, but before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.

Call button rings…

The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Samantha. Samantha asks a question that I think a lot of us wanna know the answer to. Is it true that pilots don't really fly the planes these days, that the computer is doing all the work? This is a rumor that I have heard many times, Natalie. What's your answer? 

[00:02:14] Natalie Kelley: Actually, it mostly is true, and that is actually for your safety more so because human error is more common than the computer messing up.

[00:02:30] Susan Barry: Interesting. 

[00:02:31] Natalie Kelley: What pilots have to be really good at is managing the technology and making sure that everything is in there the way it should be, such as things like altitude and what your next waypoint is. A waypoint's kinda like a GPS point in the sky on your flight plan. And so you have to constantly monitor, and you're constantly changing it as well because air traffic control is telling you, they're changing things depending on the traffic. If people were hand-flying it and trying to do all that, then you're probably gonna have a lot of just, it might not be as comfortable. You may be kinda going just side to side, up and down. You want the autopilot. It is very helpful in managing the workload of a pilot. 

[00:03:23] Susan Barry: Excellent. Well, that is good to know. Once and for all, what the real answer to that is. I have to know what made you start flight training in your 40s. I'm sure all the people in the room were younger than you. Is there anything in particular? Tell me what happened. 

[00:03:44] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. So, aviation was sort of- it wasn't like all of a sudden in my 40s I wanted to learn to fly. My father was a pilot. He was a military pilot. He was a FedEx pilot. I had an uncle who was a pilot who flew warbirds. This was a hobby for him. So warbirds are World War II aircraft, and he would go to air shows and things like that. So it had always been a goal of mine to earn my private pilot's license, especially when I was a teenager. I knew that I was interested in doing that. And I had actually created this bucket list in 1999, it's dated 1999, and earning my private pilot's license was on that bucket list. So I pulled it out of a scrapbook in, it was around 2015, '16, something like that, and wanted to see what I had accomplished on that bucket list. And that was there.

[00:04:42] Susan Barry: Oh, that's so cool that you wrote it down and kept it. 

[00:04:44] Natalie Kelley: It was typed on a word processor and printed out on, like, a laser printer. But I pulled it out, and my kids were a little bit older, so my career really was a stay-at-home mom, and I raised three boys. And at that point it seemed like a great time, because they were a little more independent. I had, at least one driver, maybe two drivers at that point. I don't remember exactly. But it just felt like this was the time, and I really was looking for something new to do. So yeah, that's what happened. 

[00:05:22] Susan Barry: Okay. How many other things on the list had you already done, can you remember?

[00:05:27] Natalie Kelley: Quite a bit. I mean, let's say, I can say there may have been, like, 30 items on the list, and there's probably, like, half of them were checked off. Yeah. Some of them I really didn't care about anymore. 

[00:05:41] Susan Barry: That's what I was gonna ask you. Are you still chasing the rest, or are you like, "Oh, yeah, no. No, thanks." 

[00:05:47] Natalie Kelley: No, not really. That was really the only one that I intentionally feel like I wanted to take care of still. The other things I didn't really care about, or they had been accomplished, and they were, like, a lot easier than I thought they were gonna be. I guess, at the time. It's like, "Oh, yeah, I did that a long time ago."

[00:06:09] Susan Barry: Well, was there anything that stood out to you during your training that you were like, "Oh, I'm so glad I waited until this age to do it, because that made it easier," or was it stuff that was harder? Do you know what I mean?

[00:06:24] Natalie Kelley: Oh, totally. Yeah. So, what made it easier, I'll go on that route first, was that I was a lot more mature at that point. And really good at managing my time. I mean, I was raising a family. I wasn't just doing something because somebody else was telling me, like, a college class, you need to take this English class or whatever. I wanted to do this. This was something I was really interested in, and I was very focused on it. So that made it easier. I knew how to plan my time. I mean, when you're a mom, and you've got schedules of five people, you have to get really good at managing time and scheduling things. 

[00:07:06] Susan Barry: Well, even me, not a mom, I know now. Like, if I went and took a class, I would be so much better of a student, because I would be interested and just more mature. 

[00:07:20] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. Yeah, and you just care more about this particular thing, you know? But everything, like, I blocked out time on my calendar to have, here's two hours I'm gonna study this day. And it was very regimented so that I could get it done. What made it harder was that I was older, and it's hard to learn new things when you're older. I'm like one of those people that I don't want technology to change too quickly because I don't know how to use this new app on my phone, you know? Can't we just stick to the way it used to be? So learning was just a little more challenging than when you're young, picking up things and retaining things was definitely a little bit harder. And of course, the time management was also difficult, because it was just adding another thing to the calendar. So, yeah. 

[00:08:15] Susan Barry: How long did it take? 

[00:08:17] Natalie Kelley: It took me almost two years to get my private pilot's license. And I was going pretty regularly. It kind of varies student to student how long it's gonna take, and confidence has a lot to do with that, too, which is an interesting thing that I learned during flight training, this is a little side tidbit, was how differently men and women approach things. Women, they really wanna feel like they're 100% ready to take a test. Men are much more like, "Well, I feel like I'm 70%. I think I'll be fine."  They're much more willing to take that leap, where women maybe feel like a lot more pressure to make sure they're not gonna mess up. So they want to make sure. They'll take practice tests over and over and over again because we just have this idea that we have to do it perfectly, and we have this bar, and we've got this. We're representing this group of people. It's just a very different mindset for women.

[00:09:23] Susan Barry: Oh, because we don't get to fail forward as guys do. And the same is true in, like, sort of a hiring situation. Women will wait until they have 100% of the skills for a job before they'll apply for it. Whereas men will often wait till they're 60. There's something else funny that I have to say about this. I can't remember the exact numbers. I'll try to fact-check this in the show notes. But there was some survey, and the results were that like 75% of men believed that if the pilot of a plane became incapacitated, they could land the plane

[00:10:02] Natalie Kelley: Interesting. I have not heard that.

[00:10:03] Susan Barry: I think that's so hilarious. I'll have to find the source and send it to you. Well, you got your private pilot's license, but you ultimately ended up flying corporate jets. How did that change the way that you think or thought about service and hospitality? 

[00:10:22] Natalie Kelley: I never intended to make it a career. You know, my goal was to earn my private pilot's license, and that was pretty much what I was gonna be happy with. It continued to evolve as time went on. I would continue to get additional ratings. I really enjoyed and found a lot of satisfaction out of completing certain things, and I just really enjoyed it. It really helped my confidence in just overall in everything. So I just kept going, and I got to know people in corporate aviation, and then I got these opportunities to start flying in jets as a co-pilot, and it just kind of turned into that.  

[00:11:14] Susan Barry: That's like a lot of hospitality people say, like, "Oh, I just fell into it." It seems kinda hard to fall into being a corporate jet pilot, but it sounds like you did. 

[00:11:23] Natalie Kelley: Well, it's true. I know. And there is a lot of pressure in aviation once you get to, okay, let's say a small business jet. You're flying as the co-pilot. Well, the next thing you feel pressure to do is become the captain. And then, okay, then you need to move up to a bigger airplane and go back to co-pilot, and then you wanna be a cap. And it's like this constant, this is what you do. I mean, you wanna keep climbing. And so I just kind of continued and fell into that. 

[00:11:54] Susan Barry: What was the moment that you realized your next chapter was gonna be about travel education rather than aviation?

[00:12:03] Natalie Kelley: I had been flying contract for a few different companies where I live locally. Basically, I didn't want to have a full-time job at that point. My youngest son was still in high school. He played football, he played lacrosse. Like, I wanted to be there at those things. So being a contract pilot allowed me to kind of pick and choose which flights I would take. I interviewed, and I had been offered a full-time position with a well-known- I don't know how you would call this. It's not a charter company, but you're familiar with NetJets and company, so Wheels Up. Company kinda like that. And I'd gone out of town to interview for them. They'd offered me the position. And I had to just really deeply think about what if that was what I wanted. It would mean I would be gone half the month, every month. I would be on the road a lot. I'd be flying a lot. I mean, I'd be getting a lot of hours, which is something I thought I wanted until I was offered that position. And I thought, "Is that really what I want?" And the decision was, no, that's not what I wanna do. And that's when it shifted for me because FlyGirl had developed, it was an aviation thing where people followed my aviation journey. I developed this FlyGirl Flight Training scholarship program for women. And I always loved to travel, and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to be a pilot.  Travel was something my family always did. So it was really about travel and still helping others achieve those things. It felt like a natural shift for me that this is not my chapter anymore. I don't have to live that chapter. This is my chapter now. I have limited time, I feel like, where my body can still go and travel, and I wanna be in charge of where I'm going, not have someone else telling me where I'm gonna go. And if I can manage my finances well, then I can do that, and I can show people how to do that, and that's where I started learning about points and miles. Then that's kind of how it shifted into learning points and miles and trying to show other people that they could still chase those bucket list items and those destinations by learning how to use loyalty programs and credit card points and miles and that kind of thing. 

[00:14:53] Susan Barry: Well, speaking of chasing your bucket list, what do you think travel and hospitality companies most often get wrong about what that type of traveler actually wants, the sort of solo traveler or a person who's very hard at work trying to check their bucket list off?

[00:15:13] Natalie Kelley: A lot of companies may think that, number one, solo travel is lonely or is trying to find the cheapest option, very budget-conscious, or I wouldn't say they always think a backpacker experience or like I'm just trying to like just keep everything cheap. And that's not necessarily true, especially, I would say for women my age or women that value experiences. And I'll gladly pay a little more for an experience or a nicer hotel or a great location. I think that I'm not lonely. Hotels often have these happy hours and things like that, where they want you to socialize. Everybody wants you to socialize. This isn't a trip for me to just get away. This is a trip for me to go somewhere and have an experience that I'm probably never gonna have the opportunity to do again, you know? So I don't necessarily need to make friends here. What I really want is maybe you connect me with someone who can be a great tour guide. I'm willing to pay for someone who can give me some great one-on-one information for what I'm interested in, like history or women's history, and make things easy for me to figure out. I mean, I value time a lot, and I don't wanna figure out how to get to the train station. You just tell me how to get to the train station, or you arrange or offer to arrange someone to take me to the train station and make it easy. Like, put it out there for me. I'm willing to pay for that kind of thing if it makes that time more memorable, less stressful, then, yeah.

[00:17:09] Susan Barry: That's so interesting. That's really good voice-of-the-customer information for the hoteliers that are listening. Okay. What are some things that are on your travel bucket list? You've been to so many cool places, so you may not have anywhere left, but tell me. 

[00:17:25] Natalie Kelley: Oh, God, I have so much left. Every time I go somewhere, I come back, and I add on, like, three other places to my list. I have a lot. So I recently traveled to China, and that was a huge, huge bucket list item. 

[00:17:43] Susan Barry: Oh, can I ask you a question about China? 

[00:17:46] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. 

[00:17:46] Susan Barry: I saw this post from my friend David Moore. David is an event planner, and he was talking about how people need to use burner phones when they go to China and to Russia, because it is very easy for, if you connect to a local network, you're like…

[00:18:07] Natalie Kelley: Hackers or something?

[00:18:08] Susan Barry: Yeah, like your trade secrets can get stolen. I mean, you're not a corporate traveler, so maybe this doesn't apply, but did you bring a burner phone? 

[00:18:15] Natalie Kelley: No, I did not bring a burner phone. 

[00:18:17] Susan Barry: Do you wish you did? I'm just kidding. 

[00:18:20] Natalie Kelley: I did not. Now, I will tell you that, before I left, you know, I did a lot of research and had downloaded an app and my own VPN private thing for my phone. It was very difficult to use the internet. And my middle-aged son actually joined me in China. And he was trying to work, and it was very difficult. He was very frustrated because you just couldn't do everything that we're used to doing. That was one of the more frustrating things. There are a lot of things I could say about China, like, I always felt completely safe in one sense because there are cameras everywhere.

[00:19:09] Susan Barry: Ah. That's a little creepy feeling, though. 

[00:19:13] Natalie Kelley: Right, there's that too. But I felt like if I left my phone somewhere, I know it would be there if I had to come back and find it, like. 

[00:19:21] Susan Barry: People say that about Las Vegas, like, "Las Vegas is the safest place in the world because everyone is watching you all the time. You could, like, leave your baby on the craps table and she'd be fine." 

[00:19:30] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't feel like I needed to bring her phone, but I was careful. Well, there were people that we met, I will say, that were careful when they were communicating with us, about having their phone in airplane mode or having it on.

[00:19:51] Susan Barry: What are some places that are left that you haven't been to yet? 

[00:19:55] Natalie Kelley: Oh, there's a lot. I wanna really hit more in South America. I've got some more Europe trips coming up, but South America has always been a little bit intimidating to me. I'm going to Panama and Colombia this coming year, in the winter. So I would say I really wanna check off some of those South American countries. Yeah. 

[00:20:23] Susan Barry: My husband has done far more than me, but the thing that we like about traveling in that direction is that you don't have that time zone situation, so I feel like you can truly hit the ground running. It's not like two days to get back to normal. So talk about the way that you plan and pay for trips. I know that that has changed over time. Can you point to any specific things that have changed as you've moved through different life stages? 

[00:20:56] Natalie Kelley: For years I had one credit card that earned points, and that occasionally, I'd buy an airline ticket with that. And I learned pretty quickly, just by educating myself, that getting these sign-up bonuses with the credit cards was really where you get the most bang for your buck. You need to earn those huge sign-up bonuses. Everyday spending is really hard to accumulate a lot of points. And so what I love about those points is that I have kind of a stockpile. I apply for cards when they have a really good sign-up bonus. I have a little stockpile, and if I see a trip or an award-priced flight, then I have the flexibility to be like, "You know what? I can do that." I can go. And I don't have to be like, "Well, I need to save this. I need to really buckle down on this." It's like, "Oh, okay. I can do that." 

[00:21:56] Susan Barry: So in other words, you're saving the points first, then finding out where you're gonna spend them on?

[00:22:01] Natalie Kelley: Yeah, I mean, there's never gonna be a shortage of me finding a place that I wanna go. There are so many places that I'm interested in. It almost leads me. I've got a trip coming up. I'm going to Germany and Switzerland, and what led me to those destinations was a points deal. So it's kinda fun where I'm not being like, "Oh, I have to go to Paris in April." It's kinda like, "Oh, this popped up. I haven't been there, so I'm gonna go." "And I have the points, so let's do it." 

[00:22:33] Susan Barry: That is the way, and that is so intimidating to people, I think. Like, I think that feels really uncomfortable to be flexible about your destination.

[00:22:42] Natalie Kelley:  Totally. Yeah, and flexibility is really important on that, but it's also really exciting. I really like that. It's kinda like, "Oh, I didn't know I would be going here in a couple weeks." It's awesome. 

[00:22:55] Susan Barry: Yeah. And I think the more you do it, the less frightening it is, or the less anxiety-producing it is. For me. 

[00:23:03] Natalie Kelley: Yes. True. And I also think people think that if you go to Europe or you go somewhere out of the country or you have a trip that you're planning, that it has to be, like, a long, like a week to 10 days. That can be intimidating. You're like, "Oh, gosh. I gotta plan for a whole 10 days? That seems like a whole lot." 

[00:23:22] Susan Barry: And pay for hotels for that long.

[00:23:24] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. I gotta make sure I have enough points. I gotta find the hotels. We're gonna move around. I mean, I feel like I have to see all this stuff in 10 days, and that is like, oh, what do they call it? Analysis paralysis where it's just so much you're thinking about that you just don't do anything. It's just too much. So just, like, go for four days or five days, and you'll recuperate from jet lag eventually. And just go. And take a Friday off, take a Monday off, and just focus on one city. You don't have to do everything, you know? Just go and do this one city. I think the other thing that's definitely changed is the opportunity to fly, like, business class with points. Like, I would not pay for a business class flight on my own with my own money. Now, if a company were to send me, okay. But I'm old. I wanna be comfortable. If I can get paid for a business class flight with points to fly. Now I have a limit. I'm not gonna probably pay a lot of points for maybe a six-hour flight. It's kinda like, I don't even have time to sleep on that. I mean, it's fine. If it's eight hours or more, okay, I'll do that, and I will enjoy the meal. I'll enjoy the experience, the customer service. I'll be able to sleep. I'll get there. I'll be energetic, and that means a lot to me to be able to do that. It's worth the extra points for me on trips like that, and I probably wouldn't have done that before. 

[00:24:59] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every episode of Top Floor with some practical and tangible tips to try in their businesses, their lives, their travels in this case. You referred to credit card sign-up bonuses before. What do you think is something people misunderstand about that? I know you said it's the fastest way to build up points. Is there something that people mess up? 

[00:25:27] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. I think there's quite a few things. Number one, they feel like they have to know everything in order to get started, and that's not true. You just start with one card and learn as you go. I mean, there are so many resources online that you can learn from, and you learn as you go. People are really scared to apply for credit cards because they think it's going to destroy their credit, and it's not. It can actually help your credit. You have to be wise, and I always say there's no point in getting a credit card for the points if you can't pay the balance. If you're gonna be paying interest, that's not free travel. It has to make sense and be normal spending. Time credit card sign-up bonuses to big expenses, like maybe tuition for your kids' college or maybe you have an insurance bill, or you've got, like, some repairs you know that are gonna come up. And, and think about, "Okay, this is kind of larger than what I would normally spend, but I do have these things coming up, so maybe I can time it to maximize that and, and earn that minimum spend." You have to know when you sign up that, "Here's what I have to spend, here's the amount of time that I have to spend it, and here's what I'll get." And that is, for example, for anyone that doesn't know, there may be a card that you get 100,000 points if you spend $5,000 in three months. So make sure you know that, because if you don't meet that $5,000 spend in three months, you're not getting that 100,000 points. 

[00:27:01] Susan Barry: Right. It's just a waste of time. What about cards that have annual fees? I feel like there are a lot of financial advisors who are like, "Steer clear. Run for the hills." For me, the ones that I have it makes all the sense in the world, because the benefits pay for the fee. How do you make that decision? 

[00:27:26] Natalie Kelley: Well, I mean, you might be surprised to know I have a lot of cards with annual fees. I do make sure, and first of all, you don't have to keep a card forever. If you find that you're not using the benefits, you can downgrade it to a lower annual fee card or a no-annual-fee card. Canceling a card is something you have to be really cautious about because banks don't really like you to just cancel a card. But there are ways to decrease your annual fee. No annual fee is great, but you don't have a lot of benefits with no annual fee, so it depends. Do you want the benefits?

[00:28:04] Susan Barry: Does it make sense for them? Why would they do it? 

[00:28:06] Natalie Kelley: Yeah. Right. You have to pay for that stuff. Yeah. 

[00:28:10] Susan Barry: Any other mistakes that you often see people make or hear about people making when it comes to the points and miles hunt? Like, besides forgetting that they have to actually hit the minimum by that certain day or whatever. You know what I mean? 

[00:28:25] Natalie Kelley: Well, we talked about analysis paralysis, and I do deal with people sometimes who come to me and say, "I have all these points, I've had them for years, and I don't know what to do with them. It seems so intimidating." 

[00:28:37] Susan Barry: Give them to me. 

[00:28:38] Natalie Kelley: I go, like, "Can you just gift them to me?" It's like, "Oh my gosh, I wish I had that problem."And they just keep waiting because they're like, "Well, there's so many places we wanna go. We don't know where to start. I don't know how to do..." It's just, like, so intimidating that they just keep pushing it off. And I would say just don't put the pressure on to plan every single trip that you've ever wanted to take with those points. Just pick a trip and do one trip. Book it one time. Ask for help from someone who's done it before. How do you book an airline ticket with... What's a good value? And with ChatGPT and AI, all you gotta do is put in, "Here's what the points cost is. Here's the cash price. Is this a good deal?" And it'll tell you, "This is a great deal." And then you can feel like, "Okay, I'm confident in making this decision and purchasing this ticket." Just start with one. 

[00:29:33] Susan Barry: Just do something. 

[00:29:35] Natalie Kelley: Yes. Yes. Well, or donate them to me. 

[00:29:38] Susan Barry: Yeah, I'll take some too. No problem. We'll include our email addresses so people can send us any unused points and miles that they have. Well, we have reached the fortune-telling portion of the show, so you have to predict the future, and then we'll see if you got it right. What is a prediction that you have about the future of travel loyalty and rewards programs? 

[00:30:01] Natalie Kelley: Okay. Especially with all the technology we have, I think that the loyalty programs will become a lot more personalized. These companies will start to know I travel by myself. I want a room, not on the ground floor. Typically, I wanna be up a little bit higher. I like decaf coffee in my room. These things, they have so much information. You don't need to keep sending me marketing stuff for your hotels. Just let me know that you know who I am. You know what I like, and I think there's the ability to start honing in on those things for people, and that will make people want to come back again and again. If you start knowing this is what she likes, then we're gonna have it ready. And make things, like, I do think loyalty programs are getting more and more complicated.

[00:30:58] Susan Barry: And less valuable.

[00:31:00] Natalie Kelley: Like, you really have to fight for those things these days. And I think a problem could be that some of these programs need to realize, like, that premium card that I just paid an annual fee on, one of the reasons I like that card is I can book special hotels on their travel portal, and I can get a $100 credit at the resort. I can get free breakfast. I can get early check-in and late check-out. It's almost like I'm at the top tier of a loyalty program if I just pay this fee and I don't have to jump through all the hoops. So that's nice, and I don't wanna have to go to the front desk and ask for something that I should already be getting. And, well, you actually have to only use that at this one particular restaurant. Or that's the issue with this. 

[00:31:50] Susan Barry: Like, all this little nitpicky stuff.

[00:31:50] Natalie Kelley: It's like fine print, little things. I mean, you're gonna lose customers, and they're gonna start paying for these premium cards because they don't have to fight for it. It's worth it to have those premium benefits for me to pay the annual fee and get it. 

[00:32:02] Susan Barry: Okay, folks. Before we tell Natalie goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.

[00:32:14] Susan Barry: Natalie, what is a story you would only tell on the loading dock? 

[00:32:18] Natalie Kelley: Okay, so flying in private or corporate aviation, you get to see quite a few things. And there's one I'm sure you can imagine. There was one particular story that stuck out to me. It was one of my first really big, busy event flights, and it was in 2022. We were flying clients to Indianapolis for the National Football Championship, I think. It was Alabama and Georgia, I think, playing. And it was because I had experienced flying as a passenger on a plane to events kind of like this, and being the actual pilot of it was such a unique experience that it was so busy and so hectic getting into the airport. There are hundreds of jets there. And you have to schedule weeks in advance when you're coming in. And when we landed, there was already a three-hour wait for fuel to get on the plane. And so, thankfully, we immediately said, "We're gonna need fuel to go back," and got on that, on that wait list. And the passengers went on to their game. The FBO, which is a fixed base operator, is a place, it's kind of like a small terminal for these private jets and corporate jets. So there were hundreds of pilots in there. There was no food really to speak of. Typically, you have a crew car at these FBOs so the pilots can go and get some food or just go do something while their clients are going to their business meeting or doing whatever they're doing. And there were none of those available, and there were pilots sleeping on the floor. I mean, it was just, we were there for hours. Hours and hours and hours. And we had told our clients, "If you can possibly leave before the game is over, there's a good chance you'll get home before 3:00 AM, if you wanna get home in time." And just seeing that and experiencing that, I know what the client saw and experienced, and he did not know any of what was going on behind and how hectic it was. Wow. And that is what you want. You know, that's good customer service. You don't want them to know. You want to remove any friction. You want to make it seamless, make it a great experience. But then there's all this other stuff going on, tired, hungry, waiting for fuel, and just all this prep that goes behind it that I think people don't realize. They just, they think, "Oh, it's just, I'm gonna hop on my jet. The bags are taken. It's just gonna be, we're gonna come right back." And when we left, thankfully, our clients did come back a little bit early. We got out pretty quickly. There's a line of planes on the runway. It takes a while to get off the ground. And, thankfully, our flight was only like an hour, but there were people going really far. I was really thankful that we weren't that far, and I was feeling bad for the pilots that had two or three-hour flights ahead of them. It was just like, these clients have no idea what's going on. Which is what you want, right? Everything's fine, and that's how you want it to be.

[00:35:50] Susan Barry: Natalie Kelly, thank you so much for being here. I know our listeners are now looking for credit card point deals to apply for, and I really appreciate you riding with us to the Top Floor. 

[00:36:03] Natalie Kelley: Thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed it very much. 

[00:36:07] Susan Barry: Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/257. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.

[00:36:43] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.